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Wednesday, March 7, 2012

What-We-Ate Wednesday: A Coconut Catastrophe?

NOTE: "What-We-Ate Wednesday" does not necessarily equate with "What-We-Ate On Wednesday." It's just a snap shot of one day of consumption from start to finish. But, I'm telling you about it on a Wednesday. It can be confusing . . . but it's important to keep our synapses firing.

Breakfast:

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I still had some Birds in a Nest left in the fridge. I felt like I should eat them because the nasty-quotient for stored eggs rises exponentially every day that they remain uneaten. But, I can only tolerate The Birds for so many meals in a row. Even I have limits. So, I really shook things up by scrambling some different birds instead.

Jenni's breakfast: four egg whites scrambledwith chopped onions, zuchinni, and mushrooms. topped with a slice of reduced fat colby jack cheese and 1/2 of a roma tomato. a Thomas Healthy Heart English Muffin smeared with a table spoon of almond butter.

On the outside of town, Elizabeth had some hard boiled eggs dipped in salt and crushed red pepper flakes. She also had a piece of flatbread smeared with almond butter and a glass of coconut milk. She really wanted a Green Monster, but the Little Lady got up early on this day and she screams like her hair is on fire if she even sees the Magic Bullet.

With breakfast safely tucked away, we headed to the city because we had some biz-ness to attend to there.

With a little time to kill, we stopped at Target to make some returns and then at Marshall's for no particular reason whatsoever. The two hour drive really took it out of us, but luckily we picked up this snack at Marshall's:

I'm a little leery of food from a discount store because I wonder what truck it fell off of (and how long ago), but this big bag was only $1.79 or something. That's a good price for four servings of pre-packaged popcorn and definitely worth the risk of a little dysentery. Plus, I'm a sucker for air-popped popcorn.

It was a good thing that we were all snacked-up because shortly thereafter we wheeled it around a corner, and, low and behold, came face to face with the devil in disguise:

I've never actually been to a cupcakery. But, I surely would like to. However, on this day, I cursed Gigi's name (that dirty hooker) and did not even tap the brake . . . except to take a picture, of course.

We didn't hesitate to stop here, however:

Now, I'm not a Whole Foods virgin. I lived in Dallas for five years. And, Dallas peeps love to blow cash on fancy food and cars. They love them some Whole Foods. But, truthfully, even when I had easy access to all this bourgeois bounty, I rarely shopped there. Mostly, because I ate like total crap during my time in Dallas, preferring queso covered cheese tacos to veggies and hummus. Plus, Grumpy Jeff liked to limit our grocery shopping to places like Albertson's . . and Marshall's.

Lunch:

Once inside Whole Foods, we had our sights set on the food bar. Each of us made at least three spastic laps around the food bar, tripping over our own feet as we tried to figure out the best tactic for attacking it. Then, we elbowed some people out of the way and filled up our gigantic Whole Foods bowls:
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Jenni's lunch:a gigantic salad with somefantastic peppered bock bock(a term that I stole from myniece), creamed spinach, alittle dab will do ya of orzo pasta,and 12 oz of sweet potato kale soup(that really could have used some salt)

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Elizabeth's Lunch:looks a whole lot like mineexcept she also had a ciabatta roll. but if you think that I didn't take a chunk of that, wellthen you don't know me at all.

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What was totally awesome about the food bar was that every single food offering had the ingredients listed. There were no dirty secrets going on at Whole Foods. At least we hope there were no dirty secrets. If you look close, you can see that I spent more than $13 on lunch, and I consider that to be pretty rich considering there was no raw fish involved.

After lunch, we went label browsing:

For some reason, I thought these "Flackers" were hilarious. I didn't buy them though because I require more from my crackers than just a good personality.

And then, something awful happened. Something wonderful and amazing and potentially devastating happened. I will swear to you that a light came down from heaven and beamed God's good grace upon us.

"Shut. The. Front. Door." we gasped in unison. No Sugar-Added Coconut Milk Ice Cream. It was a gift meant for us. Because we are Cuckoo for Coconuts. After we skimmed the label, we could hardly contain our excitement. Our conversation went something like:

E: I don't see any "Hells No" stuff on this label. I think we can do this.

J: I think we should.

E: Let's do it.

J: Where's a spoon?

E: I have some in my purse.

Then, we sprinted to the car. "Now, wait a minute!" you say. "You aren't having artificial sweeteners of any kind, right?" Our plan was to go 2-3 weeks with no fruit and no artificial sweeteners (aside from the minimal amount in an Arbonne Fizzy Tab). We are past the 2 week mark at this point and arguably have kicked the sugar addiction. Even by the Sugar Goddess' standards, it's a reasonable time to introduce a few sweeteners on the "Hells Yes" list. In controlled moderation, of course.

Snack:

So, after reading the label, and re-reading the label, the decision was made. Caution was thrown to the wind, and this is what I looked like as I got ready to have my first indulgence in over two weeks.

And, this is what I looked like after I shut'er down because a little more label reading revealed that this frozen treasure contains trace amounts of the sugar alcohol, Erythritol, which is bad, bad, bad and on the "Hells No" list:

We were both suffering from severe sugar remorse - expecting the skies to part again and, this time, for a bolt of lightening to take us out.

I ABSOLUTELY do not say this in jest. I say this with UTMOST seriousness. The Lenten sacrifice is serious business and not to be taken lightly (I'm planning on writing an entire post about it in the near future). But, I'm a Methodist turned Episcopalian so while I take the Lenten sacrifice seriously, it isn't ingrained in my spiritual being. Elizabeth, on the other hand, was raised Catholic and has "never broken a Lent." I looked over at her sad face and knew that she was feeling the immediate need to say some Hail Mary's. Personally, I thought some penitence push-ups would probably suffice.

To be fair, the nutritional labeling on the So Delicious Ice Cream was really confusing. There were ingredients and then there were ingredients in parentheses and then more ingredients in sub-brackets behind parentheses.

I instructed Elizabeth to get to the bottom of this catastrophe immediately. She consulted our Sugar Goddess Manual while I drove, still clutching my carton of coconut perfection with a white-knuckled grip.

So, what did we decide? Have the mighty fallen? Did we break Lent? After an extensive amount of rationalization, we concluded that we have not.

Well, ok, maybe we did . . . but just by a tiny little bit.

Hear me out: It turns out that the left side of this bowl of fructose-free fabulousness DOES NOT include any dirty contraband on our "Hells No" list. It is only those skanky chocolate chips on the right side that are liver fattening glycemic index wreckers. As a chocolate unlover, I had mostly eaten around them anyway. I'm telling ya, chocolate is the devil.

After what we will now call the "Coconut Catastrophe", we both really needed a pick-me up. So we stopped at T.J. Maxx and bought some really cute monkey noggin pancake molds.

Dinner:

After that purchase, I couldn't get home fast enough. I was in the front door, my purse was flying through the air, and the bisquick was out of the cabinet faster than you can say "midgets and monkeys are funny." I had a feeling that monkey noggin pancakes were going to make my kids' heads whirl. ﻿ ﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿ ﻿

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Drama's dinner:monkey nogginandmorningstar faux-sage

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While my kids had commonplace pancakes, I made myself an almond flour pancake that was inspired by this recipe, posted on a blog that I highly recommend. I modified the recipe slightly by substituting a banana with sweet potato baby food. Also, since syrup is so 2011, I smeared mine with almond butter mixed with . . . gasp . . . more sweet potato baby food. Any day now, I'm probably going to revert to wearing diapers and sucking my thumb.